THE STREET SINGER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1060, 30 June 1910, Page 19

THE STREET SINGER.

MADAME CALVE’S TIONPRETTY INCIDENT IN SYDNEY. A very pretty incident happened last week in connection with the visit of Madame Calve, the great singer, to Sydney, says the “ Sydney Morning Herald.” There is in Sydney a street singer who is often heard in the city of an evening, singing without accompaniment, by name Madame Bel Collins. Fortune has not done all that it might for her, and of late her slender means had been more than usually straitened. And this is the story as she tells it: — “ I happened to sing in Macquariestreet on Wednesday night,” she says. “ It was the first time I had ever sung here, and I don’t know why I went there that night, except that I thought that I might try new ground- “ I was singing ‘ Love Me and the World is Mine,’ when a lady came up to me in a black cloak and slipped two half-crowns into my hand. I looked up at her in astonishment. People don’t do that sort of thing often; and at the moment, for some reason, I felt sure that it was Madame Calve, the great singer. I thought, the wonder of the great singer coming and listening to me- I am an English woman, and I heard her years since in Covent Garden, in London.

“ The lady stood by my shoulder there whilst I sang- That night had somehow been a very happy one for me- There were four or five gentlemen there, and I had got about Ils, and I thought that I might go home. “ But when I finished that song the lady asked me if I would sing another. I sang ‘ Annie Laurie.’ I don’t believe I ever sang it so well in my life. She waited till I had sung it. I thought I would go home then. But she spoke to me. “ ‘ Ah, Madame,’ she said, ‘ what a sin to hear a beautiful voice like yours in this street.’ “ ‘ But, Madame,’ I replied, ‘ I cannot help it, you see.’ “ ‘ You are not Australian,’ she said. ‘ You are English.’ “ ‘ Yes, Madame,’ I said, ‘an Englishwoman-’

“ ‘ You see me at the Hotel Australia at half-past 11 in the morning,’ she said, as she left me- ‘ Ask for Miss Hulten,’ she said. “ ‘ Bu f , Madame,’ I protested, ‘I am so shabby— ’ “ 1 Never mind,’ she insisted- ‘ You come-’ “ Even though she gave another name, I thought she was doing so because she did not wish me to know. But I was convinced it was Madame Calve. I went to the hotel in the morning, and sent up a note to Miss Hulten to say: ‘ Madame, by your request I have kept your appointment.’ Imagine my disappointment when the boy came downstairs and said: ‘ Miss Hulten says she doesn’t know you.’ I thought—Oh, this is another disappointment- But I asked the boy to lend me a pencil, and I wrote: ‘You gave me five shillings last night in Macquarie-street.’ “ Directly afterwards a maid came downstairs —it was she that was named Hulten —and gave me a sovereign. “ ‘ Madame Calve is very sorry that she is so busy —she leaves this morning,’ she said, ‘but she asks you to leave her your address. She says you have a beautiful voice.’ ”